My Inner Martha

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

I haven't done much in the craft world this year, though when inspiration strikes I've been painting lately. Mostly on small canvases, just for the joy of creating. Yesterday I went to a friend's house and saw her little girl's owl themed room. These friends are very near and dear to my heart, so last night I went to the craft room and started painting a little owl scene while I prayed for her little girl. I started with the background tree and owl body and when I went to bed, it looked something like this:

This morning I finished it and now am waiting for it to dry so I can write my prayer for her on the back of the canvas. Here's the finished product!

I don't remember exactly what the owls in her room look like or exactly what colors they are, but my hope is that this little painting will make them smile all the same and they will know how loved they are.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

I know that I'm low on greeting cards, but every time I sit down to make some, I have no idea what kinds of cards I ought to be making. I mean, do I need more Thank You cards, or Birthday cards, or Blank cards? Who knows? Well, after tonight, I KNOW!

I sat down to organize my cards and came up with these category tabs:

They're designed to be printed on sticker paper, or printed on regular paper and run through a Xyron sticker maker, or even just printed and then adhered with double stick tape. Whatever works for you! Since my printer has trouble with sticker paper, I opted for the regular paper / Xyron option. Then I adhered the tabs to half-sheets of white cardstock and voila! I have card dividers!

The dividers and cards fit perfectly in some bins I got at Michael's a while back, so I was excited to have a pretty place to store them, while keeping them easily accessible. Here's what it looks like...

I also now know just WHAT categories I'm running low on, as well as where to get cards when I need them! Hooray!!

If you think having card divider labels would be helpful for you, too, feel free to pick yours up HERE!

Then we went up to the craft room and crafted together and chatted. It was WONDERFUL! I have decided that 6 is a magical age where Eliana's interests and my interests overlap and her skills have improved enough that we can spend quality time doing things that we both enjoy, and having conversations that actually have content. Hooray!! It's awesome! We created an assembly line in which I tied on the fringy string and Eliana put the snowflake stickers and Happy Holidays sticker on the cards in her own style. Really, it was a great time, and the cards turned out great!

It's baby Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in the stable. And Joseph is running away because, in case you can't read the speech bubbles (which have arrows leading to other speech bubbles because, well, Ellie's speech bubble to handwriting size is still a little off...), Joseph is saying, "AAAAA! I forgot my pants!"

Ah, 6 year old humor. Hopefully she'll just be signing her name in the rest of the cards...

Have you gotten your Christmas cards mailed out yet? My goal is to get them mailed out tomorrow morning, which means that TODAY I need to get my address list updated and print out mailing labels. Hopefully that won't take too long, because I also need to get set up for the week ahead. Of course, as I was signing my Christmas cards last night, I started thinking about next year's Christmas cards. That may seem premature, but a lot of how I do things this year is to set up for a simpler year next year. So I made a Holiday Card Planner that will come in handy when I get the urge to start making my cards for next year (which usually happens in February, or July). Here's a peek:

I am hoping to make a Homeade Card Planner soon, to correspond to this and help you design the card, purchase the correct amount of supplies, and make sure it all gets done by the time you want to send them out! Enjoy, and good luck with your cards this year!! If you find this helpful or have suggestions, please leave me a little comment love!!

Thursday, November 29, 2012

I'm pondering doing something like Project Life this year. Not so much buying Becky Higgins' albums / pages, etc, but the same general idea. Basic layouts (or even divided page protectors) that sketch out the year for me with places for journaling cards, etc. Has anyone out there done Project Life? What are your thoughts?

Sunday, November 25, 2012

As I'm putting together our Daily December activities, I'm also creating some printables you are welcome to use for your own Daily December activities! Some are specific to what we're doing, but perhaps they will inspire you or be something you can adapt for your own purposes. I already shared my Christmas Planner cover sheet with you. Here's my snowman certificate...

And here's the printout I used of our Daily December activities.

I hope you enjoy them! I will (hopefully) be posting more downloads as we go!

First off, I am going to apologize for the less than stellar pictures. I took these pictures with my phone late last night in low light, so I'm actually surprised they turned out as good as they did! But given the options of poor pictures or no blog post, I chose the former. And now.... on with the show!

I made this Advent-style calendar in February. I find that I don't have time during the bustling holiday season to make all the brilliant ideas I come up with during the season, but that I get in the mood to do holiday things around February. Perhaps that's normal, perhaps that's strange, but I say seize the motivation and do it! What a wonderful surprise when I unpacked my holiday boxes this year to find this little gem!

I have done a Daily December album in years past, and even created a list of activities to do in advance. The problem is that I have either done all the activities / done an activity every day but not finished the album, or I've finished the album (I think 2008 is actually the only one I've completely finished, since it's the only one I could find in our Christmas boxes) but had to stretch to make some of the activities. It sort of ended up with me saying, nightly, "Hmm.... what did we do that was Daily December worthy today?"

So this year we have a plan. Every day I have an activity planned to do with Eliana to celebrate the season. Here's an overview of what we're doing...

Some activities are events, like going to the downtown Christmas Stroll or seeing the Nutcracker (which is gift #11, since she is getting a Nutcracker book with paper dolls to play with - that I got on clearance last year!), while other activities are things like making a snowman or drinking hot cocoa and playing games. The days that say "Open Gift #____" she has a corresponding gift under the tree to open.

In years past I have done a gift every day for the 12 days of Christmas, but found that there were too many trinkety toys around my house, then. This year the gifts are books we already had (like the Primer Christmas Carols book I used as a child that Eliana can probably play out of now), or books / puzzles I got on clearance last January, or holiday movies we only watch this time of year. I think she will enjoy opening gifts and doing activities, and I will enjoy not having extra things around out house to clutter things up, or the cost of buying trinkety things.

As for the album, we'll see how that goes. I'd love to make one this year, but I haven't started it yet, so we'll have to see how it works. Maybe it will happen, maybe it won't. Either way, I will get to spend quality holiday time with my family, and that's what really counts.

Friday, November 23, 2012

I just looked through my last few posts and realized that I never posted (on THIS blog) Eliana's birthday party. While I **have** taken a bit of a break from crafting, I have not given up on all My Inner Martha's endeavors!! So, while it's belated, here's a look at Eliana's Candy Land birthday party....

Monday, November 19, 2012

I have not been crafting much lately, but on Sunday afternoon I got together with a couple friends and I made my Christmas cards. I love having them finished! More than that, I love our craft get-togethers. I miss crafting.

And now, having my Christmas cards finished means I am thinking about the next steps to make this holiday season merry and bright. And, well, not only this season, but next year's too. So today while I was piddling around on the computer, here's the cover I made for this year's Christmas Planner.

I'm excited to create printables as the season progresses that I can use year after year. I have used other people's freebie printables for a couple years, but find that the mish-mash doesn't make me nearly as happy as everything matching does. =D So that means creating my own! Click the picture above to download the cover sheet for the planner.

I'm debating doing a Daily December album this year. Part of my problem is that there are 33 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so I don't just want to do daily DECEMBER, but a list of the activities between the holidays. So we'll see what happens with that. I'm okay with making it simple this year, but I don't want to lose all documentation. I've been bad about recording things this year or taking pictures, so I don't want that to happen over the holidays, too!

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Yesterday I threw a baby shower for a friend having a baby boy. Her nursery is cowboy themed, so we had a cowboy diaper roundup! I made cookies, cake, a diaper cake, chocolates... it was kitchen mayhem! But the shower was fun, so here's a peek at the cookies and chocolates I made...

Lots of pink and brown!! I have to admit, it's nice to be able to whip something like this up in a matter of a couple hours. It makes gift giving so much easier! I used to agonize over every single page, but now I have learned what works and what doesn't, and the process is so much more streamlined! I watched a few episodes of Cake Boss on Netflix and crafted away. It was awesome!!

Saturday, January 21, 2012

My treadmill is in the dormer of the craft room, and it's my little workout nook. I have been wanting to make shadow boxes for my craft room for a few years now, but this phrase made me think that it would be nice to have a shadow box in my workout corner!! Inspiration in more ways than one! I also made this one, which I can write on with a dry erase marker...

LOL! It's fun! I got this sheet off a "goals" pad from Staples that I thought was fun and refreshing. So now I have a little reminder of the couple things I want to accomplish each day! I won't change it every day, but putting up general things inspires me. Like... "Today I will Work Out and Be Happy"

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Do you know how hard it is to find Anise Oil in the town of Bozeman, MT? Very. We even looked online, but had a hard time finding it in the quantities we wanted (read: less than $30 worth). We did find it at a natural market here, though, and Christmas was saved!!

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Friends of ours are having a baby and their shower was last night. I realized yesterday morning that I didn't yet have a gift. They aren't finding out if the baby is a boy or girl, and I hate generic baby gift shopping, so here's what I put together yesterday afternoon to give...

Eliana is very excited to present some of these to her teacher on the first day of school. I guess that means I'll be coming up with some creative packaging, then! In the meantime, it sure was fun to play with frosting again!